Saturday, June 23, 2012

Obama’s Dictate leaves legal immigrants in the cold

I come to the immigration debate with a unique experience. As the son of a legal immigrant on the maternal side and a family who is on the paternal side fairly new to this great country I have a great deal of love and admiration for those brave souls who take that hard leap to leave their homeland in search of something better. However, being from a family on both sides who have abided by the law every step of the way I am a firm advocate of simplifying the process. I have an aunt who voted for the very first time in 2008 (as a Republican which made me happy). In no way am I opposed to immigration or immigrants, but is what Obama is doing the right thing to do for the country? While I am starting to back off the use of the term Libertarian lately I do find myself in agreement with Milton Friedman in principal. Friedman tended to agree that so long as illegal immigrants didn’t qualify for welfare they should be welcomed with open arms. The problem is… they do, and the number of illegals on welfare may be debatable but that it is happening is a serious problem. See I don’t mind that people want to come here in search of a better life, I do mind when it’s tax payer subsidized, and worse encouraged solely for political purposed. Democrats want their votes you see, what you didn’t think they actually cared about the plight of the illegal immigrant?Democrats only care about power, how to get it, and how to keep it. Some might say the Republicans aren’t any different but in fact Republicans only loose elections because they have no guns to stick by, or if they do they’re not using them. We always talk of big reforms, but brave steel-spine individuals like Scott Walker are hard to find, especially on the issue of immigration. Mitt Romney’s tepid response to Obama’s usurpation of power in this matter only helps illustrate that point, while he called out it’s obvious political timing he failed to condemn or applaud the action putting many in a situation of doubt of where Romney is on this issue. Will Romney be the guy to fix this issue? Well he could be, but as of now he won’t say.

Because there is a large number of illegal immigrants receiving welfare benefits and because of the ties between illegal immigration and identity fraud people are being hurt by illegal immigration and therefore the problem cannot be overlooked as it would be in Freidman’s perfect world. But what does one do about it? Well we're not in a position where we can have a civil and rational conversation about this as a society now are we? After all, when one side of the isle default position is "you're a racist" it's too hard to find a common sense by partisan solution to anything, let alone immigration. Obviously we have to start by changing the narrative.

I’ve heard on the radio that if Romney’s support among Hispanics falls below 31% Obama wins. Many Republicans are afraid to offend this group, and yet what’s funny is that we have so much more in common with them than the Democrats. Hispanics tend to be pro-family and religious and so do we. Both Republicans and Hispanics just want to be able to seek out opportunities to advance our family’s condition. Plus many Hispanics I know are about the hardest working patriots you’d ever meet, values we cherish. We should be natural allies and I believe under normal circumstances would be but the mistake Republicans have made of the topic of immigration is that we allowed the left to dictate the terms by which it would be discussed. Rather than being able to discuss orderly and legal immigration policy we are now being told “open borders and full welfare benifits and if you disagree you’re a racist.” We never responded to the accusation, we just shrugged our shoulders and began adjusting our policies out of fear of losing votes.

So what do we do then? We have to regain control of the narrative. The way to do that is to avoid being against illegal immigration and insist we are pro legal immigration and express that this means regardless of national origin or something as infantile as skin color. We should adapt the motto “race is a pigment of your imagination,” and mock any uncivil discourse which takes this issue and tries to make it the modern day equivalent to Jim Crowe. It’s not Jim Crowe, we just want people to come through the front door. It’s not an unreasonable request when you think about it… but that’s the problem Democrats don’t rely on people thinking things through otherwise they wouldn’t have spent 5 trillion to clean up a mess caused by too much debt. Democrats need people to be emotional about this issue, we need them to be rational. Therefore our message can no longer be we are against illegal immigration and policies which prop up "undocumented" foreign workers over our own and our legal immigrant population, but that we are for the legal immigrant, regardless of where they’re from, because they are the ones who work hard to get here and contribute openly to our society once they are here and it is them we should be celebrating.

Sadly by propping up the interests of those who break the law to get here and have the potential to sap our tax dollars unfairly Obama has forgotten the legal immigrant and left them out in the cold and that is an issue upon which Mitt Romney and the Republicans should pounce.

About Me

I am a Libertarian leaning Conservative in the vein of Hans Herman Hoppe, and FA Hayek. I am the author of "The Great Compromise: Getting Past The Emotional Nonsense Dividing America." I am absolutely opposed to government growth and interference in free markets. However I am not fanatical about my beliefs and in fact try my best to approach politics with a "moderate tone." I like to write about religion, entertainment and politics and write material designed to encourage individualism, entrepreneurship and free market solutions to solve the problems our State and Federal governments keep creating.